Milcah Martha Moore's Book
Subtitle: A Commonplace Book of Early American Literature
Contributors: Milcah Martha Moore (Editor); Karin A. Wulf (Editor); Catherine LA Courreye Blecki (Editor)
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: November 1997
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780271016917
Subjects: Other prose: 16th to 18th centuries; Other prose: 19th century; Literary Criticism; History - U.S.; History: American; USA; American - General; United States - Revolutionary War; Women's Studies - History; 18th century; American literature; Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Intellectual life; Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; Philadelphia (Pa.); Women Authors
Description: Milcah Martha Moore (1740-1829) lived and flourished in the Philadelphia area during its peak, when it was the center of commerce, politics, social life, and culture in the young republic. A well-educated woman, disowned by her Quaker Meeting for an unauthorized marriage, Moore knew and corresponded with many of the leading lights of her day.

From her network of acquaintances, she created this commonplace book, which contains 126 works of prose and poetry by at least sixteen different authors, mostly women.

Included in Moore's Book are two of the most avidly sought-after bodies of writing from British America: sixteen new poems (twenty-four in all) by the Quaker polymath Susanna Wright and a previously lost portion of the journal kept by Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson during her trip to England. There is also a remarkable selection of pieces by Hannah Griffitts, the Quaker moralist and wit who commented on politics, society, and domesticity during the Revolution.

Moore also included writings by Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Fothergill.